TL;DR
- Circle announced cirBTC, a wrapped Bitcoin backed 1:1 by native BTC with real-time onchain reserve verification.
- The product targets institutions burned by WBTC’s governance problems and the $1.7 trillion in Bitcoin sitting outside DeFi.
- cirBTC is ‘coming soon,’ launching first on Ethereum and Arc, and is subject to regulatory approvals.
Circle, the company behind USDC, announced a new product: Circle Wrapped Bitcoin, or cirBTC — a tokenized version of Bitcoin backed 1:1 by native BTC, with reserves independently verifiable onchain in real time. The move pushes Circle beyond stablecoins for the first time and puts it directly in the path of BitGo’s Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), which has dominated the space for years but spent much of the past year fending off governance concerns and delistings.
The announcement did not come with a launch date. Circle listed cirBTC as ‘coming soon, subject to applicable regulatory approvals’ and opened a waitlist for institutions. What it did come with was a clear argument: that more than $1.7 trillion in Bitcoin is currently sitting outside decentralized finance because institutions don’t trust the existing wrapped-bitcoin products enough to use them.
What Circle cirBTC is and how it works
cirBTC is built on the same infrastructure Circle used for USDC and EURC. Each token is backed by native Bitcoin held in reserve, and those reserves can be checked onchain without waiting for a third-party audit report. Circle says it is designed specifically for OTC desks, market makers, lending protocols, and other institutions that need tokenized BTC for trading, collateral, and settlement — the kind of buyers who have been most skeptical of the incumbents.
The product launches first on Ethereum and Arc, Circle’s own institutional blockchain, which counts Visa, BlackRock, and HSBC among its early participants. From there, Circle says it plans to expand to additional chains, consistent with its approach of deploying USDC across 30 different networks.
The real-time onchain attestation is the clearest product differentiation from WBTC. BitGo’s model relies on a more opaque custody structure that became a flashpoint in 2024, when the company announced a Justin Sun-affiliated entity would take a greater role in managing the asset. MakerDAO moved to limit new WBTC borrowing positions in response. Coinbase delisted WBTC entirely and launched its own competing product, cbBTC, in September 2024.
The wrapped bitcoin market Circle is entering
WBTC has held the top position in the wrapped-bitcoin category since 2019, but its market share has been sliding. BitGo’s product still holds over 65% of the market with a market cap in the $8 to $14 billion range, but cbBTC — Coinbase’s entry — grew 160% in 2025 and now sits as the third-largest wrapped Bitcoin by supply, having pulled directly from WBTC’s share rather than growing the overall pie.
Circle is entering a market that is simultaneously large and shaky. The total synthetic Bitcoin supply on Ethereum has not grown dramatically — the gains by cbBTC largely came at WBTC’s expense. That means the growth thesis for cirBTC depends less on taking share from other wrapped tokens and more on Circle’s argument that institutional distrust has kept $1.7 trillion in Bitcoin locked out of DeFi entirely. If that pool can be moved, even partially, it would dwarf the current market for wrapped BTC products.
That is a big if. Bitcoin holders, particularly institutional ones, have historically shown little appetite for moving their holdings into DeFi infrastructure, regardless of the custodian. WBTC has been available since 2019 and the market it served never came close to the figures Circle is pointing at.
Circle’s broader push in 2026
cirBTC fits into a period of visible expansion for Circle. The company went public in June 2025 on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker CRCL, with shares closing at $83.23 on the first day after pricing at $31. Since then it has been moving to extend its infrastructure into new areas: Arc launched with institutional partners, the Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol processed $126 billion in transactions across 30 networks, and the company picked up Interop Labs to accelerate its multichain ambitions.
Entering the wrapped-bitcoin market is a different kind of expansion. It puts Circle in competition with an existing product that, despite its problems, still controls most of the category. It also requires Circle to demonstrate it can maintain the institutional trust its own cirBTC pitch depends on — a task that becomes considerably harder if the product’s regulatory approvals face delays or if the underlying Bitcoin custody arrangements draw scrutiny of their own.
The waitlist is open. Circle has not said when it expects cirBTC to clear regulatory review or when the first tokens will be minted.
